


Bark Dust

by rfsmiley



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Pre-Arrangement (Good Omens), Theology, Whump, author has never written wound care before and is extremely nervous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24261583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rfsmiley/pseuds/rfsmiley
Summary: Crowley is injured during the Saxon Wars, and Aziraphale gets his hands dirty.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 211
Kudos: 713
Collections: AJ’s personal faves, Good Omens (Complete works), Ixnael’s Recommendations, My faves - Good Omens Whump, Our Own Side, Prom 2020, kashiichan's favourites





	Bark Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [racketghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Exit Wounds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530895) by [racketghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost). 



> This is a gift for that pearl of a poltergeist, [ms racket q ghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost). We tried to write for each other and, well, kind of just ended up mixing our diverse tastes into interesting cocktails (oh god I should've said to begin with: hers is INCREDIBLE). Anyway, hopefully she can swallow this one. Racket, my dear, if I failed, know that it was attempted with love.
> 
> I will also say that I tried to borrow from her fantastic Strange Moons atmosphere, although this fails to be fully fanon compliant (just as well – what a presumption, to try to write a prologue to that masterwork!!). Let's call it a cousin universe, then, with much lovely wound care to come. I also hooked some imagery from anti_kate’s [wonderful entry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24162817/chapters/58187419#workskin) for the last NTA round, so thank you to Kate as well! 
> 
> The last credit I need to give is to an extremely intimate poem called [The Cinnamon Peeler.](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-cinnamon-peeler/) Much of the imagery and metaphor in this is borrowed from its text.

**Saxony, 793**

“Should’ve known Charlemagne was your lot,” Crowley is saying. He is drunk, propped in the crotch of a forked willow tree; three feet below him, Aziraphale sits with his back against the trunk, next to their empty skins of wine. “No one is ever that much of a zealot on his own.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” the angel says. He is trying to get the gnarl of a root out of an uncomfortable spot, and failing; he obliterates it with a haphazard miracle instead, and goes on. “Humans can achieve piety without heavenly intervention, you know.”

“I’m not interested in what humans can achieve without heavenly intervention, I’m interested in how this one just happens to be the worst fanatic in the last century.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” says Aziraphale peevishly, “you might be interested to know that I wasn’t even assigned to him until his father’s death.”

“There you are, then. That’s still a fair length of time,” says Crowley. “770, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, thereabouts.” Aziraphale pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to remember. “It’s getting hard to keep track.”

“Too many wars,” Crowley agrees. He belches, as though it’s a statement. “Always war. Getting a bit much, innit?”

Privately, Aziraphale agrees with him. In his own mind, the conflicts have already begun to bleed together. Every few years, it’s the same old song: cities sacked, crops burnt, civilians murdered, and yet, somehow, each subsequent one is always worse than the last; the weaponry is always one step more advanced than it yet had been; there are always sinister new accoutrements to carve a soul out of skin.

He has tried, he really has, to develop a stomach for it, but even now he can’t help but think that Heaven might be getting it wrong, on occasion. Charlemagne himself is a prime example: true, unifying several discordant regions of Europe is a noble goal, and of course his devout faith is praiseworthy, and he is surprisingly open to some forms of progress. With any luck, Aziraphale might even sow the seeds for a tiny cultural Renaissance in the aftermath of his rule.

But he has always found the king’s obsession, nay, fetishism for stamping out the Saxon paganism to the east slightly depressing. During their councils, he had spoken quite a bit about triumph through discourse, and intellectual foils, and a number of other clever foibles that he had been quite pleased with in the moment.

Of course, it had gone nowhere in the end. The following year marked the beginning of the invasion, and that was that.

Aziraphale had no desire to get involved with the bloodthirsty business at all, but, after a series of increasingly pointed responses to his annual reports to Heaven, mostly regarding the imperative nature of a victory, he had eventually found himself in Saxony – only to find that Crowley, to his utter lack of surprise, had beaten him there.

“Seems like a shit reason to come after people, that’s all I’m saying,” the demon muses from the tree. “A different religious perspective.”

“He’ll bring peace, Crowley,” says Aziraphale wearily.

“Easy enough to bring peace after you’ve brought decades of slaughter first,” says Crowley, and the tone of his voice is almost pleasant. Almost.

They sit in silence for a minute, and then the demon sighs, and slithers ungracefully out of the willow.

“Thanks for the drink,” he says. “I should get back.”

Aziraphale wonders what “back” means. Crowley is here on business, like himself, but it’s a stretch to imagine him anywhere near a battlefield, or the scattered, starving members of the pagan tribes. Not for the first time, he wishes he knew exactly what it is that the demon _does_ , to accomplish Hell's purpose on Earth.

More to the point: what could a fallen angel even hope to do, lacking both divinity and purity of purpose?

But it's not the sort of thing one asks. Instead, he watches the demon nudge dirt over the embers of their fire, gather up the empty skins of wine. And then he remembers why he requested the meeting. He still has not said it, the thing that he has been drinking to try to find the courage to ask.

“Crowley,” he says. "I've been thinking."

"Knew you wanted something," Crowley says, sounding grim. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

He knows, even as he is saying it, that it’s hopeless, but he has to try. There are a lot of lives at stake. “You could – make the pagans more receptive to the idea of conversion. They trust you.”

The demon turns, and stares at him.

“Surely Hell would be satisfied with an elaborate betrayal,” Aziraphale suggests. It’s feeble, at best. The fire in the yellow eyes is making him regret inviting him for a drink at all.

“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that of me,” Crowley says, and then he is gone.

*

After the next waxing of the moon, the fighting starts again.

Aziraphale has no desire to get involved on the battlefield. For the most part, he works remotely, ensuring that messengers' missives never go astray, protecting the area from the worst of the winter's wrath. Occasionally he visits the encampments, resplendent as a representative of the king, to heal some of the wounded, and dispatch his messages, and infuse the remainder of the company with divine purpose.

He cannot quite bear to stay with them, however. Their enthusiasm for the war is depressing. Instead, he conceals his own tent in the woods, sparse but for a pile of furs for warmth in the night, and drinks and eats without company.

It isn’t lonely. It can't be lonely, by definition, if the isolation is a choice.

At least, that's what he tells himself.

Now and then, however, he finds himself wondering where Crowley is, what sorts of things he's been up to. The curiosity blazes as hot as ever: what sort of work does one even do, to advance a scattered pagan cause? Does it require silky whispers of discord and dissent, stoking the fury of a persecuted people? Or does he simply share their fire and their wine, and listen?

He tries not to think about it. He tries to be content. He even prays for guidance, one frigid night, sending up a supplication to the Divine for Her help, asking for a sign, any sign, that he's in the right place, that they've chosen the right king. He has been so diligent, so patient. Surely it isn't for nothing?

When dawn finally breaks, he isn’t sure what he expects it to bring, but even his humblest expectations are not met; the morning brings him nothing but a heavy frost. It’s pretty – the world remade in silver – but it’s hardly illuminating.

Aziraphale sighs, and reaches for his cloak and gloves, and steps out into the wood.

It's a cold morning, but even so he walks for a long time. Half-formed in his mind is a desire to visit the willow where he had met with Crowley, a vague notion that he might like to see all of its curling branches licked in white.

As he climbs towards the hillside copse, however, the thought vanishes from his mind, driven by something much more interesting: someone has tracked through the frost before him, has left great wet streaks in the silvered grass.

Aziraphale surveys the tracks, frowning. The marks are dark with blood. It's apparent at a glance that whoever came this way was badly hurt.

He hesitates only for a moment, and then he follows the trail.

It weaves, haphazard, in the same direction that he had originally been walking, as if it had also meant to cut towards the willow. Halfway up the hill, however, it veers away, towards a thicker stand of trees. Aziraphale goes after them, not that there is much farther to go; he can already see the person curled in the thicket, the fetal shape in the hollow of three knotty young bushes. Some soldier has left the company, he guesses, and come here to die in peace.

A moment later, as he approaches, he sees his mistake.

It’s not a human after all.

The being slumped in the undergrowth is Crowley.

He is barely recognizable. Gaunt and stained, he hardly resembles the jaunty figure who had been drunk and insolent from his perch in the willow, mere weeks before. His hair is uncharacteristically matted and filthy, several shades darker than its usual lustrous jasper, and with his eyes shut and his body curled into the bark of a yew, he might be nothing more than a human, albeit one that has been badly injured or –

A corpse, Aziraphale thinks, staring at him. He looks like a corpse.

He can’t speak. He crouches instead, and touches two fingers, questioning, to Crowley’s exposed throat, wet and white and cold. His answer comes in the opening of the serpentine eyes, and he knows how serious it is at once: he can recognize the pain instantly in the miosis of the pupils, the lines of black merely splinters, the sclera gone yellow and serpentine.

Their breath comes in small clouds. Then Crowley uncurls a little, and Aziraphale sees the wound almost without surprise.

“They blessed their swords,” the demon says, eking the words out from some deep and gasping part of him. And then, in a fit of sudden anguish: “They _blessed the_ _sword_ _s_ _–_ who does that –”

The angel says nothing.

He says nothing all the way back to the tent, and he most especially does not comment on the worrying fact that, in his arms, Crowley weighs almost nothing at all.

*

The demon cries out only once as Aziraphale lowers him into the waiting nest of furs. His jaw moves, clenches, releases in a moan, which he he tries to stifle as Aziraphale peels away his soaking tunic to survey the damage.

His inference in the woods was right. It’s a bad wound.

In fact, it's likely one hair shy of fatal. The flesh gapes just left of a purely cosmetic navel, and had the casualty been human, it would have spilled his intestines, condemning him to an ugly death of blood poisoning. As a demon, Crowley’s insides only loosely follow the normal model, and Aziraphale has never been more grateful for that; he cannot smell the rot that would mean punctured viscera, leaking bile.

Even so, the cut is wide and the back of the shirt is bloody, too, confirming the obvious inference: Crowley was run clean through (which means that he was on the battlefield, Aziraphale thinks in wonder; which means that he was fighting like a man, and not a demon at all). Blood still pulses sluggishly; indeed, the furs are already wet. He cannot guess how much has already been lost.

Too much, probably.

“I don’t understand,” he says at last. “You have as much power as I do, why haven’t you done something?”

“Can’t,” Crowley gasps. He snaps his fingers, and nothing happens at all – which, Aziraphale realizes an instant later, was the point. “The sword –”

Wincing, he turns his head aside, but the angel understands. It is not just a mortal wound. It is also divine, and it has left Crowley powerless.

Well, the angel thinks grimly. He has never healed anything quite this serious, but the general principles must be the same.

He sets his hands on the demon’s stomach and concentrates, reaching into himself for a delicate thread of divinity. If he had thought to use it to stitch up the wound, however, he sees instantly that it was a mistake; the skin bubbles at a touch and Crowley hisses, arching away from him.

“Is that a _benediction?_ ”

“No,” says Aziraphale, jerking his fingers back, aghast. “Maybe?”

“Aziraphale,” says Crowley, “really, sincerely, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but: _ouch._ ”

“I was trying to heal you,” the angel says despairingly.

Crowley bites a curse out through gritted teeth. “Then try something _else._ ”

“What, the human way? But I don’t know what –” Aziraphale begins, and then he stops. Humans sew each other up, don’t they? That’s a medicinal practice, in some cultures, isn’t it? Vaguely, he thinks of a row of sutures, lit by the hot Egyptian sun. How had they done it? “I haven’t got any catgut or silk –”

“Good thing you’re an angel then,” Crowley says, almost hysterically. He is panting now, the long line of his throat rigid with pain.

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale says, startled, and then a part of his tunic unravels into his hand, a long spun fiber, miraculously clean. He fashions a needle too; the eye knows better than to not hook the thread on the first try.

They stare at each other. The thread nudges against Aziraphale’s wrist, curling, serpentine.

“Should I pour spirits over you first?” he says helplessly, and Crowley twitches, considering it.

“Do you _have_ spirits?”

“No, but I could miracle some up in a jiffy, if you –”

“Don’t,” says the demon, jerking back from him in instant terror.

“My dear, I don’t think that a summoning would imbue it with any sort of celestial –”

“Let’s –” Crowley shudders, and turns his face away, as if to spare Aziraphale the sight of his fear. “Let’s not experiment with that right now, all right?”

“Well, I think we’d better,” says the angel, softly, looking at the miracled needle in dismay, “or else we’ll be in trouble in a moment.”

Catching his meaning, Crowley huffs something between a laugh and a sob, plucks the needle from his fingers, and jabs it forcefully into his own stomach. Aziraphale sees the flinch, but the demon recovers most of his control a second later, and meanwhile the last inch of the metal protrudes, quivering, from an expanse of flesh that does not blister.

“There you are,” he says raggedly. “See? Knock yourself out.”

“That’s one way to do it,” Aziraphale mutters under his breath.

In the end, there are no spirits. Upon consideration, the wound is too awful; Aziraphale does not think he would have the nerve to douse a sword cut that goes all the way through someone, or be able to soothe the ensuing agony without using his power. Instead, he washes as much of the rent flesh as he can with cloth and water, and then he gets to work.

He sews with as much haste as he can. Even though Crowley steels himself for it, and does not wince as the needle bites into him – tugs – draws through, it must be unpleasant all the same, for Aziraphale is acutely aware of the scope of his own ignorance. Bereft of divine intervention, he does not know how to stitch cleanly, or how to help without worsening the hurt, and so he opts for speed instead, focusing only on drawing the skin together and sealing that awful, gaping, bloody mouth.

The result is a gnarled suture line, twisting like a tree root in the hollow of the hip, longer than the breadth of a hand, and then they work together to roll Crowley’s body forward a little, and he has to do it all a second time, in order to close the matching wound in the back.

There isn’t much else he can do. He dresses the wounds in simple honey from his stores, disregarding the weak protests this causes – “what, are you going to _eat_ me?” – and then moves him again, trying to bandage him as well as he can. It’s coming on towards noon by the time he sits back, exhausted, and discovers that at some point, during either the jostling or the binding, Crowley has actually passed out, which says a lot about the extent of the pain.

Aziraphale looks at his hands. They are streaked with color, as if he has spent the morning skinning a small animal. Feeling sick, he banishes the blood with a miracle, but it doesn’t much help.

His hands still do not feel clean.

*

Crowley stays essentially unconscious for two entire days after he is sewn up. Aziraphale finally wakes him in the afternoon of the third day; he fills the tent with light, so he can see what he’s doing, and gingerly peels the furs back.

The bandage is crusty with blood and honey. Underneath, he discovers that the skin is still red and raw, an angry knotted seam that parallels the gaunt hipbone. Aziraphale frowns; while the flesh has begun to knit together, which is good, and there is no fresh seepage, the wound is uglier than ever. Around the stitches, the whole of the abdomen has begun to purple.

“How does it feel?”

“Why don’t I run you through with a sword,” says Crowley blearily, “and then you’ll know.”

The angel chooses not to respond to this. Instead, he prods a little at the flesh with a thumb, and the demon hisses, recoiling like a threatened snake.

“Stop, stop, fuck –”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be that tender,” says Aziraphale, bewildered.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to torture a casualty of war,” Crowley fires back. His eyes are glassy; he sinks back into the furs, breathing hard, and the muscles in his stomach ripple and convulse.

The angel glares at him.

"Have it your way," he says, and closes his eyes, and evaluates him with his power instead.

Instantly, he understands the scale of his stupidity.

How powerfully naive he has been, to think that honey and thread could fix a wound like this.

Here, in the darkness behind his eyelids, is true form of the serpent, coiled and black. Here is the shine of his eye, the white gleam of his fangs. Here is the aromatic scent that clings to his scales, the spice of evil. And here, too, is the wound, limned in brilliance, impossible to miss. It is a beacon in the darkness, crackling and spitting with fire.

It is the first time that light has made Aziraphale afraid.

Looking at him this way, he can see the truth of their immediate future written in Crowley’s form. Whatever hand had blessed the sword had not infused it with enough sanctity to cause instant death, the way that a dousing of holy water might have. Instead, the wound and its infection of light is slow, insidious, creeping. With his eyes shut, he can see the embers gnawing away at Crowley’s shadows, eating a hole into the belly of the snake.

Blessing the weapons might have been merely an act of faith on the part of Charlemagne's soldiers, but wielding them against a demon made that act, in practicality, the deadliest thing that they could have done.

He opens his eyes.

Crowley has his face turned into the fur. His breathing is slower, more even than it had been. He looks tired, but he stirs a little and cracks one eye as the angel, rigid with shock, lifts his fingertips from the bruising pelvis.

“Now what?” he mumbles, groggy with sleep.

“I don’t know,” says Aziraphale blankly.

“Sss’okay. I’ll jussst,” and a yawn fractures the statement. “Sssleep it off.”

“No, you won’t.” He can hear his voice shaking.

"Well, not if you keep waking me up."

"Crowley, listen to me." It's increasingly difficult to talk. "I think you’re dying.”

“That works too,” Crowley says wearily. “I’ve been discorporated before, you know.”

Aziraphale can’t answer him, which is an answer on its own, he supposes.

After a moment, both of Crowley’s eyes open.

“Oh,” he says. “Huh.”

“I,” says the angel, and stops. He has no hope of fixing this. He doesn’t even know what to say.

Crowley somehow has the wherewithal to be merciful. When he speaks again, he sounds wry, with any fear that he feels carefully tucked away (although, later, Aziraphale will wonder whether or note that actually made the moment worse).

“Well, it is a holy war. Death to all heathens, right, angel?” The corner of his mouth slants, an impressive attempt at a smile. “Gosh. Just think how pleased your king will be.”

*

He sleeps.

Sometimes he mumbles; sometimes he makes little hitched sounds, soft noises that make him sound horribly young. Mostly, however, he lies on his side like a dead thing, one arm flung out, his hair a snarl that hides his eyes. Under his skin, Aziraphale knows, the embers of light are spreading, as rampant as an infection.

The angel does what he can. Leaving Crowley alone for part of the afternoon, he returns to the willow and smites branches from it, trimming the twigs with a slim belt knife. The pile looks like kindling in his arms, but he brings the harvest right inside the tent. Despite his misgivings about leaving to begin with, as he enters, he can see that Crowley hasn't even moved since he left; he doesn't know whether the sight brings relief, or terror.

In his haste, that first time, he uses a miracle to shatter the wood, steeping and straining the fragments in a pot of boiling water until it produces a bitter willow bark tea. Crowley, limp as a doll in his arms, is surprisingly quiescent when it is pressed on him; he swallows most of it with only a single grimace and then lies back, without ever opening his eyes.

Aziraphale sits in the furs next to him. He sets his fingers against the hot hearth of Crowley’s cheekbone, his forehead; he pushes back the tangle of hair. The demon sighs, and turns his face towards Aziraphale’s wrist; the angel feels the soft mist of breath on his own skin.

They have never really touched before.

It’s not the kind of thought an angel should have, looking at someone who is suffering. Aziraphale thinks it anyway: the impossibility of their skin, his hand against that throat, not to strangle, not to injure, but to measure the fever, to try to help. It’s – strange. Not unpleasant, not quite. It summons other thoughts of the myriad ways that humans touch each other, when they are not actively trying to kill each other; the times when they seek comfort, sport, fellowship, pleasure.

He drags himself back from the precipice of that thought. He tells himself that this is medicinal, and it’s not quite a lie, for Crowley seems more peaceful, somehow, under his caress. But there is something greedy about it too, something selfish. They have spent nearly five thousand years in orbit without collision, without compromise. Without touch.

And now, Aziraphale is at risk of losing that opposing force altogether.

It’s an incomprehensible thought. Allowing himself to trace the indentation of the pulse point, the hollow of Crowley’s jaw, he tries to imagine what the world might be like, without their chance encounters, without the humor in that slanted smile, or the flash in his eyes when he’s said something wicked, making Aziraphale laugh against his will.

It would seem empty, he realizes. Some essential spice would be gone from the dish, leaving him – what?

More wars, most likely, and more centuries of Heavenly assignments, and perhaps some unknown demon, sent to replace this one.

Fear skewers him like a second blade. He presses down slightly, until he can feel the steady drum of the heart, the blood just there under his finger, answering his question: not yet, not yet, not yet.

Crowley sleeps.

At his side, the angel has little to do. He whittles pieces of willow bark. He steeps bitter tea, and every few hours, he rouses the demon into enough consciousness to drink some of it. He fashions a comb of yew, crude and ungainly until a miracle makes it sleek, and gently untangles the matted mass of red hair. Over time, it becomes a halo of shining garnet strands, fanned out against the fur, and then the cycle begins again, as sweat and restlessness tease the knots back into being.

Aziraphale combs them out patiently, and then returns to replenishing his stock of cut willow.

He’s grateful to have something to do, the hypnotic, repetitive motion of whittling, the feel of the knife in his hands. The only part of it that he dislikes is that his hands seem dirty all the time now. Bark dust from whittling mottles his hands, collects under his nails. It makes them look foul and filthy.

Someday, he thinks, examining them, he would like his hands to be immaculate. Spotless. If such a thing is possible.

On the fourth day, Crowley does not wake up.

*

The willow tea had not seemed to be helping, or so Aziraphale had thought, but without it, Crowley’s fever is worse than ever. He is hot to the touch, and under the furs he becomes so restless that the angel gives up and peels them back. The bandage, too, is coming apart, and both it and the last few pieces of the demon’s clothes become rotten with sweat almost as quickly as he can miracle them clean.

Eventually Aziraphale changes his approach. He warms the air in the tent with his power, strips the demon, and washes him. It’s horribly invasive, of course, and he does feel guilty about it, seeing and touching Crowley like this without permission. He tries to focus on one part of the body at a time, but still the details collect in his mind: the fiery tufts of hair in the armpits, the ribs visible when he inhales, the decision to wear male genitalia, which some small part of the angel is wildly curious about.

Healers are impartial, he tells himself, but in the end, he cleans the bandage once more and drapes it over Crowley’s hips, a modicum of privacy.

The one silver lining is that the physical aspect of the wound does look like it is healing. The diagonal line of stitches is no longer puffy, but simply a red serpentine line that snakes down under the navel and dips below the cloth, towards –

The tent is too hot. Aziraphale steps outside, now and then, to cool off, to stand in the building drifts of snow, to look up at the canopy of leafless twigs, to try to breathe again. It occurs to him that there is work he should be doing on Heaven’s behalf, right now, as conflict rages elsewhere in Saxony.

It doesn’t seem terribly important.

And then, a second thought occurs, something which has not yet crossed his mind at all.

The two of them are not the only supernatural entities here for professional reasons.

The notion is chilling. Aziraphale has never met the Four Horsemen personally, but of course they are abroad in a ravaged country, in winter. Famine has probably just arrived. Pestilence has likely been sniffing the encampments, trying to find a foothold or two. The other two, of course, have been here from the beginning.

He has never really considered them with anything like fear, but it occurs to him that one of them is likely very close by; that he might even be in this wood, now, watching Aziraphale’s futile attempts to try and ward him off.

Waiting.

He goes back inside the tent.

(Not yet, says the pulse point. Not yet, not yet.)

Taking his hand away, he hesitates, and then closes his eyes and examines the wound again with his power. It has eaten a ring of fire into the serpent’s scales; it looks agonizing. Crowley’s fortitude in bearing the pain in silence, before he was fully unconscious, is simultaneously impressive and devastating.

He wishes he knew what to do. He can’t even whittle any more. Eventually, he just lies down in the furs himself, and toys with the idea of prayer.

The hours pass.

Once, and only once, Crowley calls to him. He is facing into the corner of the tent when his spine inverts, in a way that no human could manage, and he cries _Aziraphale,_ quite unmistakably.

“I’m here,” says Aziraphale, who is already curled against him, running his fingertips along the sharp lines of the shoulderblades. His eyes sting. “I’m here, I’m here.”

Of course Crowley cannot hear him. 

He says it anyway.

*

The tent is growing dark. Somewhere there is a sun; somewhere it is setting. Aziraphale does not much care.

He is aware, as he sits in the mess of furs near Crowley’s feet, that he is experiencing the hitherto unknown feeling of hatred.

It is hatred for a number of things, a list that is rapidly expanding. His own impotence, first and foremost. His own idiocy in coming to Saxony, in winter no less, away from his own comforts and trappings and occasional willful blindness. The fact that he was sent here to stamp out paganism, to write the sanctity of the one true faith again and again in red ink. How many times must it be written, anyway?

Above all, he hates this stupid, horrible, wretched tent, small and claustrophobic and miserable – not at all the kind of place, he thinks furiously, that anyone should have to spend his final –

The tide of anger washes through him, and, like a sediment, it is clouded with the fine sifting dust of grief.

The force of it is surprisingly strong.

The angel pauses. He reaches into himself, runs his fingers through the wellspring of it, those dark, cold, poisonous waters. It is a strange sensation; it feels a little bit like reaching for his Grace, except that this, whatever it is, is graceless. It is separate from his divinity entirely.

But it still has power.

Aziraphale considers the revelation for a moment as he watches Crowley. The demon is sleeping on his side, sprawled in the fur. He is wet with sweat, and scalding to the touch; in the shadows the angel cannot see if he is flushed with fever or not.

His thoughts are dangerous as the slow seep of blood.

Power is all he needs to fix this. Not divinity. If he can pare down to the power alone –

– why, then it would be as if he were a demon, wouldn’t it?

Crowley’s body flinches away from the touch as, gently, Aziraphale rolls him onto his back. For a moment only, he mumbles in his sleep, and then his eyebrows furrow together as the angel unwinds the bandages and sets his fingertips, feather-light, on the blackening belly.

He hesitates. He thinks about a king, demanding Christianization on pain of death, exulting in the Massacre of Verden; about letters from Heaven, sealed with moonlight, commanding a victory in Saxony; about the fall of the Morningstar, and the price of doubt. He thinks about ineffability.

Some things are meant to be. Some things should not be interfered with.

Inaction is all that is required of him, in this moment, to snuff out Crowley’s life.

But he cannot accept that.

He takes a deep breath, and damns him.

It’s hard work. Flooding the tissues slowly with his power, he forces himself to despise them, to remind them on a molecular level that they are unloved, irredeemable: that they have risen from and shall return to dust without ever knowing comfort or succor. Damn this light, radiating through an infernal being and consuming him. Damn these embers of divinity, eating him alive. Damn this wound, sewn inexpertly, marring the lines of a perfect body.

He curses all of it, with all of himself, with all of the strength he can muster.

At first, he cannot quite keep himself from touching with his hands, too, soothing where the flesh has begun to knit over the pelvis, trying to make amends for the painful truth he is telling on an atomic level, but eventually he has to stop. It slows the healing too much. It gives the body too much hope, for one thing; and for another, the immediate response of the nearby flesh, roused by his fingers, rapidly becomes a distraction.

Afterwards he washes the dried blood from the concave belly. Crowley’s skin is still trembling underneath him, which he ignores.

A hand snakes between them, touches his wrist.

“Angel,” says Crowley thickly.

“Hush,” says Aziraphale. His eyes have welled up, unexpectedly, at the sound of that voice, so familiar, so missed. He blinks hard. “Hush, you’ll be all right now, I think.”

“ ’S okay. It doesn’t hurt,” the demon slurs. “Not any more.”

Looking at their entwined fingers, Aziraphale wonders if he means the wound, or Falling.

*

Crowley rests through the day and wakes sometime in the afternoon. Aziraphale, caving to his feeble requests for something other than willow bark tea, opens a little cask of mead, and helps him drink some. It’s painfully sweet, he knows, and the demon wrinkles his nose a little, but he allows himself to be propped up, allows the cup to be brought to his lips.

Watching him swallow, the angel has a flash of awareness of the strange tableau that they must make; a demon, vulnerable and weak, drinking without fear from the chalice of an angel.

 _Death to all heathens,_ Crowley had said. _Just think how pleased your king will be._

Well, who gives a damn, anyway, Aziraphale thinks savagely. There is no one there to judge him. Charlemagne feels very far away, and so does Heaven, for that matter. The world has narrowed to the perimeter of the tent, and the single other being inside it, and he finds that he cannot even bring himself to be sorry about it.

He returns to his task: he is stripping the bark from a willow branch. Crowley’s fever is finally breaking, so the willow tea is a moot endeavor at this point, but for some reason he can’t quite curb the habit, after a week of whittling. At least it’s something to do with his hands.

Behind him, the demon flops down again – he must be feeling better, he hasn’t moved so freely since the injury – and sighs.

“ ’Sss shit, this healing thing,” he says.

“You’re very welcome,” says Aziraphale. It’s dry, more so than he intends; he is trying to hide that he feels utterly giddy with relief.

The yellow eyes blink open again, and Crowley looks at him, abashed.

“I owe you, don’t I,” he murmurs.

“Oh, no, please,” the angel says at once, even as he instantly slices into the meat of his own thumb with the paring knife. After managing not to yelp with the pain of it, he shields the injury, so that the demon won’t see it. “That’s not what I – _please_ don’t.”

“Aziraphale.”

The angel discovers that a silent miracle can repair the flesh, but it doesn’t ease the sting. Cradling the hand, he closes his eyes and says, “I wish you wouldn’t think of it like that.”

“I will try to repay you,” says Crowley, softly. “If I can.”

He forces himself to pick up the knife again. “Well, then, thank me and have done with it,” he says, falsely cheerful. “That alone is more than sufficient.”

Crowley makes a noise in the back of his throat that says, very obviously, that it is not. He moves restlessly in the furs for a while; Aziraphale listens to the susurration of the tiny soft hairs, which seem, somehow, to prickle against his own skin.

“All, right, well, thank you, but if it wasn’t to press an advantage, I don’t understand why you would do it.”

Aziraphale jerks the knife and nicks his thumb again. Furiously, he sucks on the cut.

“It would have been a victory dropped right in your lap.”

The taste of iron is not a familiar one. Nor is it altogether pleasant.

“I can phrase it as a question, if that would help,”

“Crowley, for God’s sake, can’t you ever leave anything alone?” says Aziraphale, exasperated, through his mouthful of blood, as he miracles the second cut away.

“Pity, then,” the demon guesses, from the tumble of furs. “You felt pity.”

Now the skin is unmarked, but somehow it hurts worse than ever, searing as hellfire. “I suppose I must have.”

“Silly thing to keep around, during a holy war, you know. Might want to ditch that. If you can.”

“Well,” says Aziraphale. He clears his throat. “You were suffering.”

“Yeah, exactly, that’s what I mean,” Crowley mumbles. “Plenty of people out there suffering, at the moment.”

“ _You_ were suffering,” says Aziraphale tightly.

He is aware of the yellow eyes opening. He doesn’t look over.

“Angel,” says Crowley after a moment. He sounds warier, suddenly, and his voice is hesitant, disbelieving. “Is this – I mean, are we – Do you –”

“Crowley,” says the angel, without turning, "you should rest.”

He whittles a ludicrous amount of willow bark, but in his defense, he can feel the demon’s eyes on him for a long time.

*

By the time the sun sets, Crowley is strong enough to sit up. Aziraphale is stirring a porridge, sweetening it with the last of his honey, but he keeps an eye on the demon as he sways and stretches, gingerly getting used to having functional limbs again.

“That smells vile, angel.”

“You’ll have to endure it, I'm afraid,” Aziraphale says, trying in vain to keep himself from smiling. “No oysters or lamb out in the woods.”

“I’m serious, I'm not eating that,” Crowley says. “It’s the honey. I think you might have ruined honey for me.” He shudders. “All I can think of is you smearing it over those stitches.”

“That’s unfortunate. Especially since I intend to make you eat it, in a moment.”

“ _Ugh,_ ” says the demon, indignant. “ _No._ Listen, what if I –”

“No arguing,” says Aziraphale, firmly. “You’re still healing.”

“Am I?” Crowley inquires. Out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale sees him slide a hand over his torso, feeling the skin. “I feel like we can progress to the past tense.”

“Not yet,” says Aziraphale, and he can almost feel the pulse point echo it, ghostly, at his fingertips: _Not yet, not yet, not yet._

"And while we're on the topic, by the way," Crowley continues, “I'd really like to know how you did it.”

Well. He had known it was coming. Still, he hadn’t quite braced himself for it yet. He sets the pot aside, and takes a deep breath, and turns.

“All right,” he says. “I damned you.”

He doesn’t like saying it; the words taste sour in his mouth. But Crowley just raises an eyebrow.

“You _damned_ me,” he repeats.

“Well, not all of you,” the angel amends, feeling increasingly silly. “Only the parts that needed damning. A localized damn, if you will.”

Crowley’s lips twitch. He looks as though he doesn’t know whether or not to laugh.

“Very angelic of you,” he says at last.

Aziraphale bites the inside of his cheek, and does not reply.

“You might have gotten a bit carried away, though.”

“What?” says the angel, startled, and Crowley grins at him.

“You mean you haven’t seen it?” he inquires. "Come here."

Warily, Aziraphale approaches; the demon makes room for him in the furs. Together, they roll back the cloth of the bandage and look at the uncanny moon of the demon’s stomach, strangely white and unblemished – and whole.

“Carried away,” the angel murmurs, astonished, his hand hovering over Crowley’s navel. “My word. It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“You should have left me a scar,” says Crowley. He is trying to sound cavalier, and failing; something about the holy hand, inches from his skin, is making him antsy. “Something sexy.”

Aziraphale chuckles, he can’t help it. “I’ll bear that in mind, next time.”

It hangs in the air, _next time._ Crowley’s eyes are as yellow as the bark dust of cinnamon, even in the dim light. He cocks his head, gazing up at the angel, and they both consider the slip of the tongue and what it implies.

Then the demon – inhales.

It is not an innocuous intake of breath. It is a long, slow, exaggerated draw of air, and his flat stomach rounds and pushes up, up, into and then flush against the spread of Aziraphale’s hand, belly to palm, an invitation.

Well. The Serpent of Eden is not known for his subtlety.

“Thank you, my dear,” says Aziraphale softly, without moving. “I’m flattered, but I think I ought to decline.”

That glint of gold is inscrutable, until Crowley looks away, and clears his throat. The contraction of his abdominal muscles flexes the skin, tugs it away from the point of contact. It feels like a loss.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he says. “Next time.”

*

Sometime before dawn, seven days after Crowley was run through by a blessed sword, they rest.

They are still lying in the furs together. Aziraphale is on his side, head pillowed on an arm, watching Crowley, flat on his back, practicing filling the tent with light, and extinguishing it with a snap of his fingers. His infernal powers are returning, albeit slowly.

“Honestly, I still can’t believe that you could do it.”

“It took me a while to even imagine that it was possible,” the angel admits sleepily. He yawns. He cannot remember ever yawning before, but he is that tired. “Should’ve thought of it earlier. Spared you a little of the agony.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too much,” Crowley remarks. “I thought the same thing. Divinity is an intrinsic part of an angel’s power: check. I always imagined that Falling strips one, leaves the other.”

Aziraphale frowns a little. “Well,” he says. “Now we know. An angel’s power is not inherently divine.”

“Maybe not _any_ angel’s _,_ ” the demon counters, grinning in the way that means he’s about to be particularly insulting. “Maybe you’re the only one.”

“I hardly think that’s likely,” Aziraphale protests, but even as he says it, he remembers the venom that had risen in him right before the epiphany. That was hardly angelic, surely?

“Well, maybe not,” Crowley says, relenting at the sight of his discomfort. “Not like I know many other angels to ask.” He props himself on his elbows, taking another look at his unmarked belly. “But I’ve definitely got to watch my back, if you have this kind of dexterity.”

“Dexterity,” the angel repeats.

“Sure,” says Crowley. “Think about it. I mean, really, _r_ _eally,_ think about the implications of what you just said. Just for a moment. If angels have that much control over their power – it means that we’re not that –” He bites off the sentence, floundering for a moment.

“That what?”

“I mean, well, I don’t know, it’s just," and he waves a hand awkwardly. "An interesting thought.”

“Elaborate, please,” says Aziraphale, from the depths of his exhaustion.

Crowley’s jaw works for a moment. At last he says, “Let’s put it this way. If you wanted to, you could do my job as well as your own.”

“Oh, I don’t think that follows,” Aziraphale says, recoiling.

“Well, I do,” says Crowley, and his voice is as bitter as the willow tea, just for an instant. “In fact, I think you’d be a natural at temptation.”

“That’s –”

“Hey, I wonder if it works both ways. Maybe I could bless people,” the demon goes on, abruptly blithe again. He waggles his fingers. “What do you think, angel? Do I have the range?”

Wearily, Aziraphale considers this, the absurdity of it, benedictions wrought by a demon. Then, unbidden, the memory of those icy internal waters of rage and grief comes to the surface again: that secret well of power, buried somewhere deep inside him, concealed in a lightless thicket. It was a place in him that was not divine. All that remained was a depth of doubt that an angel should not have.

At last, he murmurs, “I think you’d have to be able to love.”

“Interesting thought,” says Crowley levelly, and he lies back in the furs and stretches, hands pushing out the soft canvas of the tent.

The splendid arch of his intact body, handsome and whole, is the last thing Aziraphale sees before the exhaustion overtakes him.

*

He wakes alone.

Latticed shadows move across the canvas of the tent, patterns made by bare branches at the mercy of the wind. It’s morning, he can tell from the fine clean quality of the light, streaming through the hypnotic sequence of ever-changing shapes.

Aziraphale lies there, and watches them, and does not get up for a long time.

The demon does not come back.

Outside, the Saxon wars rage on. The angel returns to his role as healer and councilor, visiting the king’s soldiers to heal and to write his terse reports. He does not infuse the encampments with divine purpose, however. Not any more. He is too afraid of the consequences.

Most of the time, he stays in the wood, and waits patiently to be found again.

It’s nearly spring before someone comes. Aziraphale, filling his waterskins from the creek, is caught completely off-guard by it; he nearly topples into the water when a shadow falls over him and he looks up to find that he has company, for the first time in many months. For a moment he thinks he has hallucinated Crowley writ small.

Then he blinks. The illusion passes; it is not a demon. It is a boy, green-eyed, dark-haired, holding a sealed packet out to him with hands that tremble, frightened no doubt by the rumors of the mysterious figure who lurks in the wood.

“Sir,” he says. “Your presence is required in Lombardy.”

“I am needed in Saxony,” Aziraphale says automatically. “I was asked to report on the war –”

The boy blushes, stammers. “The f-fighting is over, sir. Has been for a fortnight. This is a message from the king.”

Aziraphale rocks back on his heels and stares at him in silence. Then he reaches his hand out for the letter.

Its tidings are grim. The insurrection has been quelled to the king’s satisfaction, at least for now. The royal family is well, but for the fact that the queen is very ill (reported dispassionately; Aziraphale has an instant vision of the teeth of a comb, pulling unsteadily through strands of soaked red hair, and despises Charlemagne with the entirety of his being). In the meantime, the monarch has his eye on the title of emperor, and requires Aziraphale’s counsel at once.

“Thank you,” he says to the boy, who flees from him.

He might as well go, he thinks, folding the papers again. After all, Crowley has probably already long since departed, if the rebellion was lost.

As if his thoughts have summoned it, he finds a feather as he packs his things. Not a pinion or primary, no, nothing so fine, but a little bit of black down, blown into the corner of the tent. He doesn’t dare keep it, of course. (Against his will, he tries to imagine what a world might be like in which he could keep and cherish a lovely black feather. It fills him with fear and hunger in equal measure.

Not yet, whispers his own vaguely human pulse, beating hard in his ears. Not yet, not yet, not yet.)

He takes it outside instead, lets the wind carry it out of his fingers. He watches it twist and dance among the new-leafing branches, until all at once it flutters out of sight.

Letting it go was the right thing to do, he tells himself. Maybe some poor bird will use it to feather her nest. Maybe it will help to keep her impetuous brood from falling.

It’s a nice idea.

He does keep the furs from the tent, though. He can’t quite help it. He thinks he might keep them until they fall apart. They smell faintly of iron and blood, and, underneath that, a spice that he can’t quite put his finger on, even when he loses track of time trying to think of it; even when he has his face buried in them, inhaling deeply, one hand moving on himself unseen; even when, during a rare sleep, he dreams of the dark, enveloping scent, and wakes in a sweat before dawn.

Above him, the moon is as yellow as an eye.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: thank you so much for your kind words! also - please let me also holler about this [art](https://sungmee.tumblr.com/post/618664933231673344/i-am-a-sucker-for-wound-care-especially) by the enchanting sungmee and these [two](https://books-and-omens.tumblr.com/post/621633772250644480/aziraphale-in-saxony-bark-dust-by-redfacesmiley?is_highlighted_post=1) [pieces](https://books-and-omens.tumblr.com/post/622183146294804480/crowley-in-saxony-also-inspired-by-bark-dust-from#notes) by my dear books-and-omens!! I'm.... I can't really talk about it really but I love them all, thank you a hundred and fifty times over.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Aziraphale in Saxony](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24888154) by [everybody_lives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybody_lives/pseuds/everybody_lives)
  * [Crowley in Saxony](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24963901) by [everybody_lives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybody_lives/pseuds/everybody_lives)




End file.
